I think most people (on every part of the political spectrum, unfortunately) believe that restorative justice is the same thing as punitive justice.

And it's hard to explain to someone who thinks they are the same that "making someone suffer" can be independent and separate from "righting someone's wrongs." That you can be anti-suffering and pro-reparation.

It's kind of like this: there are languages that don't have a word for green. The people who grow up speaking these languages have a harder time distinguishing different shades of green.

You say, "I don't want that shade of green." And these people respond, "the hell is wrong with you!? We agreed we wanted this blue-yellow color that you call green! Now you're saying you want less green instead of more? Green is good!" Because they genuinely cannot see what you're advocating against and what you're advocating for.

Just like how it's nearly impossible for me to explain to a pro-capitalist that there is a difference between a workers' cooperative and a public traded corporation. The person will say, "they're both businesses" even though to me that's like saying dictatorships and democracies are, "both governments."

But the difference is missing from their vocabulary. And because of that, they don't even know how to approach it and think about it and express their thoughts on it. Because they don't even have the words to describe it.

I'm going to take your non-answer for a "no."

Which is acceptable. I didn't mean to pressure you.

But I'm also going to try again to explain myself. Because I feel like I did a poor job.

And other people do their shit because of what they have experienced. So far it has not helped me control it better to know that.

I think I mislabeled my solution when I said, "look for the hurt." Because upon reflection, it wasn't finding the "hurt" that helped me.

It was finding the target. It helped when I convinced myself that the real target of the cruelty was not the person who ended up receiving it.

My brother in the above example? I was able to let go of his barbs when I realized his barbs were aimed at himself. He didn't even really reflect on his own statements enough to know whether "outcast among outcasts" applied to me. He was insulting himself, and wound up missing himself and hitting me.

My mother in the above example -- who currently embraces a bunch of people telling her, "some people are beyond saving," -- doesn't actually understand that the resulting philosophy defends and maintains a system of oppression over minorities and poor people, (and over several categories to which she herself belongs.) And she wouldn't be happy if she realized that. Because the real, true target of her desire to give up on people is the people who gave up on her. She's just missing them and hitting the wrong people.

That commenter that somehow got my blood boiling? His target was an FBI or NSA agent, or any number of his "normie" friends who started to distance themselves from him after he entered the alt-right. He's lonely. He's isolated. And he's lashing out against everyone trying to control and punish him by inflicting this loneliness upon him. And he ended up missing them and hitting me.

In all cases, these people were throwing darts after being spun around a few times, blindfolded. In all cases, they had a target that it might have been okay -- or at least understandable -- for them to hit. And realizing that they were missing their true target is what gives me peace.

You replied to my accidentally deleted comment (which probably isn't deleted on your instance.) I really wish Liftoff didn't put the edit button right next to the delete button. But oh well.

Did the children abuse and own slaves? No? Then who the fuck said kill the kids too. Imagine fucking defending slave owners and saying they don’t deserve to be out to death. Imagine defending the most evil atrocities imaginable. Do you think the Nazis shouldn’t have been put to death? Because the slave owners did worse than the Nazis ever did.

Edit: also no one fucking stepped aside. They fought a fucking war over it remember. You don’t get to start a war to enslave humans and then cry peace I surrender when you start to actually suffer the consequences.

Try defending black people like you defend slave owners.

I believe in life sentences, not death sentences. I would have been fine if the Nazis had been thrown in prison to serve non-commutable life sentences for their crimes. I would have preferred it.

But the entire reason the Civil War didn't stick was because slaveowners kept their property. Not because they kept their lives.

who the fuck said kill the kids too

Dude. Their kids grew up and enslaved black people using "prisons" and Jim Crow laws. And they were able to do this because they wielded the power they inherited from their slaveowning parents. If you leave the kids this power, then you're going to need to kill them eventually for committing the same crimes.

Just take away their power! Imprison as many of the slaveowners if you can. And then leave it at that.

The South surrendered unconditionally. If I had a time machine, and could influence the North's decisions, I would take their property because that would actually accomplish something. But I would not take any more lives than were absolutely necessary.

Because I don't want to be on the side that kills more people than is necessary.

Yes. And it's horrible! And we should have done more!

We should -- like I said -- have stripped property from the slaveowners. They surrendered unconditionally! The North could have done with them as it liked.

It should have confiscated the property of everyone who profited from slavery prior to the war, and given that property to the slaves. And yes, the North should have killed as many people (be they slaveowners or bootlickers) as was necessary to carry out that transfer of property.

Station troops on the plantations. Shoot everyone who shows up with torches to burn them down and deprive former slaves of their newfound wealth.

But what I'm trying to say is: no more than that number. No more killing than is absolutely necessary to achieve that goal.

We should be imagining Jeff Bezos in prison, not dead. You don't want to make allies out of the people who want him dead. Those people are not good friends.

if every slave owner and klansman were put to death for their heinous crimes

Their property would have passed to their heirs.

If your only available tool was killing people, then maybe you could have followed it up by killing their children?

But then you have to contend with the fact that your movement (and the people you have handed weapons to) are now a very specific subset of communists -- "communists who are okay with killing children." You can't build a country off of that!

If on the other hand you have some way of stopping slaveowners' heirs from receiving their fortunes without killing those heirs, then you clearly have some tool that can void the property of the slaveowners themselves without killing them.

And once again, if you choose to kill the slaveowners despite possessing such a tool, then you wind up building your movement off of, "people who are fine with killing when it's no longer necessary." After that, it's no surprise when that movement starts running over a bunch of members of Hungarian soviets -- the very people the movement claims to protect -- with tanks.

Yeah, I think their plantations should have been taken from them. Yeah, I think Klansmen should have been stripped of everything they owned.

But once you're powerful enough to do that, you're also powerful enough to do that without killing them.

If they throw their bodies in front of the Orphan Crushing Machine, don't let that stop your bullets. But if they step aside, you have a choice: align yourself with people who kill when they don't need to, or align yourself with people who avoid killing whenever possible.

One of those is better than the other.

Still? I have no idea. Although I was working on it yesterday, the computer itself is an HP 800 G1 from like, 2014, I believe (uses a 4th gen i5).

And in 2014 (I think it's safe to say) they still used jumpers.

Dude, I just found out BIOS passwords were a thing today. I also learned how to reset the password by pulling a "jumper" off of some pins.

But they did though. Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, Alexander H Stephens, plus countless slaveowners all just... surrendered, and went back to owning the exact same plantations their slaveowning had provided the startup capital for.

Was it right? Hell no! Their plantations should have been given to their slaves. We would live in a better country if they had.

But it's worth repeating that people who blew out their chest and blustered about how it was better to die than to lose this fight just went right back to comfortable lives after a heinous, sadistic, brutal form of capital exploitation was abolished right out from under them.

If you can abolish slavery without killing Dolly Sumner Lint or Jefferson Davis, then it stands to reason that even after sending Pinkertons, cops, and bootlickers to die by the thousands, these billionaires will surrender at the first sign of blood on their doorstep.

Meaning you can abolish capital without killing Jamie Johnson OR Jeff Bezos.

Which in turn means the killing of those particular people ends up peripheral at best.

They will not throw their bodies in front of the bullets aimed at their orphan killing machines.

As much closure as they would bring, as good as that would feel. It's just not going to happen.

And then, at that point -- when they have surrendered -- it's like torturing a serial killer. We gain nothing. It doesn't bring anyone back to life. It doesn't put the aerosolized carbon back underground or bring the temperature back to livable levels. All it does is introduce a little bit more pain to the world.

Again: at best.

At worst it could potentially set a precedent that anyone perceived as "aligned" with billionaires deserves the same death inflicted on those billionaires.

In other words, at worst, it could turn the person holding the guillotine into the de facto capitalist controlling all of the factories, all of the land, and all of the equipment single-handedly. Because who is going to stop them? Anyone who challenges that person can be easily labeled a "reactionary capitalist counter-revolutionary" and punished according to that label.

I don't know. Some time ago, my 20-year-old, Ron-Paul-adoring self was ranting and raving to everyone who would listen about how SOPA and PIPA were about to destroy the internet.

In other words, there are occasionally some people on the right who latch onto good ideas (like a free and open internet) that seemingly require tech knowledge.

I know this might be a bit intrusive, but would you mind telling me a story (with some fake names) of a recent time that you got mad?

Something that sticks out to you.

And would you mind if I asked a number of follow-up questions about the story and the people you describe?

I'm pretty sure I'm also ADHD and I certainly also hate injustice and inaccuracy. (Jordan Peterson talking about IQ will basically send me into a rage.)

More to the point: anger, criticism, shame, fear -- those emotions will have my chest tightening and my pulse racing.

Anyways, a piece of advice that I found once that was weirdly helpful (no idea where I found it) was a cardboard cutout metaphor. But I'll be using a snake metaphor instead.

Get this, we have more than one brain.

We have a brain we share with lizards (that's got our territoriality, our fear, and our anger). We have a whole layer of brain around the lizard one that we share with mammals (cuddling, protectiveness, affection, etc). And then we have the thinking, rational part of the brain. I think it's called the cerebral cortex.

And part of what that last brain does is take in stimulae and interpret it. Only after this part of your brain interprets stimulae does the rest of your brain feel an emotional response.

The Snake Metaphor

The example given in the article was with cardboard cutouts of gang members. But I choose this:

Imagine you're walking on a dirt path somewhere and you come across a piece of garden hose that looks vaguely like a snake. And you're afraid of snakes.

You will either feel terror or nothing at all.

If you think it's a snake, there willl be adrenaline and cortisol pumping through you.

If you realize it's a piece of garden hose -- even with the same exact visual and auditory stimulae -- you will feel no fear.

Because your emotions are a slave to interpretation.

There's a moment when you recognize, "oh, this person is willingly hurting someone." You feel the rage only after that recognition.

I'm guessing, given your description of your quick rages, you will most likely NOT have time to apply this in the moment. So you'll need to do it all in hindsight: reflect on individual incidents after they occur. Every time you calm down, try to reinterpret the situation and then add it to a databank of reinterpretations. Eventually, you'll start to encounter scenarios you've already seen and added to your databank.

Reinterpret "this person is willingly hurting someone" until it becomes "this person is a wounded dog, biting everything who approaches without knowing or caring who it hurts or who is trying to help. It's not cruelty; it's pain."

Reinterpret this:

Jordan Peterson claims that some people just have low IQ and "that's a real problem. Society doesn't really have a solution to the existence of these kinds of people. They just cost humanity resources and contribute nothing."

until it becomes:

Jordan Peterson only advocates social darwinism because he's a millionaire funded by billionaires. He doesn't even advocate what he cares about. He's a pathetic shill, desperately chasing money because wealth is the only substance in his life. No love, no hope, no aspirations. A wounded animal with tunnel vision, unable to be happy or form meaningful bonds with people.

And suddenly anger becomes pity.

And once you start looking for it, you'll realize a rather profound truth,

Evil Never Emerges From a Vacuum.

I had an older brother who called me an, "outcast among outcasts" and that hurt me deeply until years later, when I found an old essay he wrote where he described his greatest insecurity. It was, word for word, "I felt like an outcast among outcasts." The exact "insult" he had used on me.

Like a wounded animal lashing out.

I have a mother who's deeply immersed in the intellectual dark web. (Hence me hearing Jordan Peterson enough to drive me crazy.) And I thought that was pretty cruel of her until I realized:

humans are scummy and greedy and anyone "advocating" for a better system just wants an excuse to greedily devour everyone else

... was a damn good description of her entire childhood! All of the adults. All of the people responsible for her. And she cannot look past that, because she formed her worldview in the years during which no figure in her life set aside their own self-interest to be kind to her.

And she needs people like Peterson who will tell her that an unchecked flood of human greed and selfishness is exactly what capitalism was built to endure and to harness.

In reality, most people are better than that, and she should have been treated better. And a bunch of teenagers stranded on an island for fifteen months treated each other better than anyone in her life ever treated her. And she can't see that.

Like a wounded dog blinded by pain and rage.

Just the other day, my chest was actually constricting due to some random anonymous commenter getting mad at me. (Yes, that happens to us ADHD folks). And the ONLY thing that helped was when I realized, "the commenter also accused me of being a Fed at the end of his comment. Clearly he wasn't angry at me. He was angry at an FBI agent he believed to be monitoring him and trying to mind-control him on behalf of the globalists or something."

Yet another wounded animal lunging at every shadow he sees.

I don't believe it's possible to dampen an emotion. I certainly don't think it's possible for a neurodivergent to bring an emotion to neurotypical levels. After all, as an ADHDer, your hyperfocus will always amplify the shiniest thing in the room, and rage and shame and fear are always the shiniest thing in the room.

But you can cut them off at the source. You can choose to interpret the situation as one that does not call for an ounce of rage in the first place.

Firstly, we must recognize that our empathy and compassion are a privilege -- we were loved at a crucial, formative time in our development. We were cuddled at a very specific age that allowed our brains to develop empathy. We were loved at enough pivotal moments that we believe kindness can be expected from people.

Which -- at least for me -- is impressive, because it was a traumatic upbringing that could have been a hell of a lot better. It's impressive that such a childhood created someone "good." But as twisted as our parents and relatives and role models may have treated us (I don't know your story, but there sure is a lot of trauma in mine) we both still got enough affection to understand human connection, which is a form of happiness that exceeds all of the other forms of happiness combined. Ludicrous wealth? Being top dog? Preying on the weak? None of them come close.

Not everyone got what we got.

Have you heard the phrase, "hurt people hurt people" ?

Edit that. Change it to, "ONLY hurt people hurt people." Turn it into a mantra: every time you're upset, look for the hurt that causes the cruelty. I promise you, you will always find it. And when you do, your anger will abate, because you will recognize: it's not cruelty. It's pain.

Such an eloquent response

First of All, we Lost the Vocabulary War

There almost no arguments in favor of the thing anti-capitalists dislike and call "capitalism." Every argument you see is an argument in favor of market systems and self-determination, which may be necessary components to some capitalist societies, but aren't important criteria to the people advocating against our current system.

It was a clever move on the part of whoever redefined, "capitalism" until it meant, basically, "all human, economic activity."

Fortunately, that's a double edged sword. One can advocate communism these days, calling it instead, "democratic workplaces", and "worker cooperatives", and "worker owned businesses."

And the overlords can't tell their workers, "that's communism!" Because they've spent the past 180 years redefining the terms.

Technically, according to their own warped-until-useless definitions, everything is capitalism. Because worker cooperatives ✨exchange goods and services for currency✨, they are capitalism too.

That said

Nevertheless, to answer the question: the most egregious argument in favor of capitalism is the businessman's story. You've probably heard some variant of it.

1. Tom has an idea!
2. He makes a prototype, refines the process, and then starts selling his whatchamacallit!
3. His watchamacallit has soared in popularity! The orders are coming in faster than he can meet them! He meets with investors who, in exchange for part of his company, give him enough startup capital to build a factory and hire wage workers.
4. He manages these wage workers, becoming gradually more wealthy as his business expands. He is now able to recline on a beach as the fruits of his labor continue pouring in. And those clever investors can recline on a beach as well!

By presenting (1) and (2) in the same narrative as (3) and (4), with the same characters, the story portrays (1) and (2) as mere extensions of (3) and (4), when in fact their presence in a society is hard to protect when (3) and (4) are also present.

The Wright Brothers never could get royalties from the people who used their inventions to build planes. Tesla never gained wealth from his society-altering technologies. Hedy Lamarr never earned a cent for inventing WiFi (according to some stories, she never wanted to, and donated her patents to the American war effort. But she still struggled with poverty in the middle of enriching numerous people).

The most telling part of this argument is that one could substitute (3) and (4) for literal slavery! And the narrative would look pretty much the same.

"Tom's getting more orders than he can handle, so he heads over to a slave auction to pick up some help! This way, he can produce more, and his new property can learn valuable skills! It's a win-win! This is how slaveowning helps Tom profit off of his idea!"

It was no accident that slaveowners of the American South considered their society and their struggle the last bastion against a communist takeover of the world.

It's a very compelling story (as misleading as it is). A tale where the beginning makes the listener root for the protagonist all the way to end -- even after he's committed unspeakable atrocities that plunder the world of its wealth.

Because we all want to be Tom and come up with a wonderful idea (or learn a rare skill) that makes us valuable to the world. We all want to bring some contribution to the table and have that contribution recognized.

The ice we skate is getting pretty thin, indeed

The ice we skate is gettin pretty thin

Not to be mistaken for "tough love," the concept that manipulative people will often use to defend their coercive verbal assaults on their targets.

In order to understand where people are coming from when they criticize this system, you must understand the difference between a worker co-op and a privately owned company.

Most people think,

Well, it's just a different ownership structure. It's not much different than when workers are rewarded with stock options. Co-ops and companies are both examples of capitalist organizations.

But to those of us criticizing the current system, that's like saying dictatorships and republics are "just different examples of governments," and that aside from a different managerial structure, both kinds of government fundamentally serve the same purpose.

They don't. When it comes to dictatorships vs representative governments, the entire social contract is different. The entire relationship between government official and citizen, between worker and manager, is different.

Free Speech

The citizen in a dictatorship and worker in an... autocratic company (for want of a better word) must both self-police their speech, asking "will this get me prosecuted/fired?" Just taking a harsh tone with your boss can lose you your job. There's a pretty good NPR article about what bosses are legally allowed to fire you for. And even having different political beliefs is on the list.

Meanwhile, the citizen in a democracy/republic and workers in a cooperative have no such limitations. Their speech is only limited by a general, "do not harm others" guideline that gets spelled out on a case by case basis in courts (for governments) or in discussions with your coworkers (at a co-op).

Expenses

Again, in both an autocratic company and an autocratic government, the citizen has no control over where money is spent and doesn't get to choose which contractors/suppliers the organization uses.

Contrast that with democratic workplaces/governments, where voters are constantly discussing the budget, audits, social security, how to trim waste, how much to pay local farmers for ingredients, etc...

It's not only that you must agree to become subservient in order to continue working at an autocratic company. You also get no voice in the organization that sustains itself (at least in part) off of your labor.

These are irreconcilable differences.

You don't say "well, whichever governments come out on top must be the fittest, strongest governments. Let the arena of war be an impartial judge deciding which governments are superior."

To the contrary, you most likely recoil in shock when a dictatorship invades a democracy. You most likely cheer on every strategic victory the democracy achieves.

Because the state of existence of a citizen under a representative government is considered worthy of protection independently of whether it helps that government achieve military victories. The rights of a citizen are considered more important than the question of whether a government that protects and respects those rights can be efficient.

All we ask of you is to consider the same for a worker. To consider the possibility that a worker might have certain unalienable rights that must be protected even if it's hypothetically inefficient (in reality co-ops are more efficient, btw. As are democracies. The only reason they are less common is because unlike viruses, cancer, and companies owned by individuals and/or shareholders, co-ops do not have the capacity to induce rapid grow by destroying their host.) We ask that you consider the possibility that the worker -- simply in working for a company -- deserves a say in the operation of that company.

So, like, "the perfect woman" ?

Or maybe, "be a lady" ?

Hell yes to all of this! Any defense of capitalism requires social darwinism.

That is, if you can get someone to comprehend what "capitalism" even is! I am astounded at how difficult it is to communicate the difference between a worker co-op and a privately owned business. To anyone!

It's weird because it seems so obvious to me. It's a difference in how the worker is treated. A difference in the dignity of their work. A whole different social contract.

I don't know what combination of words I need to use to get them to see this! It's so frustrating. How can they so easily understand the difference between a dictatorship and a representative republic, but not be able to extend that logic to how we run businesses? What kind of incredible social programming have robber barons performed on them?

Anyways, rant over for now. I agree that we are hobbled by overwork. I agree that our creativity is forcefully suppressed in order to make us better cogs. I just wish I could figure out how to spread the word.

Oh, yes. I am fine with the idea that every human -- regardless of their occupation or their results on an IQ test -- can engage in something that could be called "stupidity."

Absolutely everyone makes stupid mistakes. Absolutely everyone holds at least a few stupid beliefs.

But I also think when we encounter those aspects of a person, we can use better words to describe the concept. Words that don't have a social darwinist connotation. Words that no one mistakes for "permanent, unchanging" attributes.

Like: I don't like Trump supporters, but "Trump supporters have an impressive resistance to information that might challenge their worldview" is so much better than "facts don't work on them: Trump supporters can't read."

The former describes a choice these people repeatedly make. The latter is immature name-calling.

And to be honest, my main gripe with conservatism in general isn't even how its proponents handle information. (Everyone has to use heuristics to quickly estimate the reliability of a news article before believing the headline. They take as much issue with our heuristics as we take with theirs.)

My main gripe is that conservatism is a social darwinist philosophy at its core.

"Black people get lower grades. Clearly they have worse access to an environment that facilitates learning. We need to expand access to libraries and safe spaces so we can better foster these children's growth" A progressive might say.

And the conservative will respond: "you had me at 'black people get lower grades.' That says everything there is to say. They just can't compete. Strongest chimp gets the most bananas, you know?" /Shrug/

Giving up on people is practically the bedrock of modern conservatism. I would accuse them of being cruel before I would accuse them of being unable to read. I would accuse them of ignoring information that does not justify their cruelty before I would accuse them of being too stupid to process that information.